You are here

Financial Reform

Why would we support an amendment to make a bad bill worse? We wouldn't. Here's our explainer on how our signature on a 2014 letter should not have been used to somehow imply we supported an amendment to S2155 on credit scoring favoring Equifax and the other Big 3 credit bureaus.

Our statement on final passage by the U.S. Senate of a sweeping bank deregulation bill: Excerpt: "“It’s very hard to watch the Senate vote to ignore the painful lessons from the causes of the Great Recession 10 years ago. The warning signs are plain to see."

Here's our statement on modest changes to the free credit freeze provision of S2155, the massive bank regulation deregulation package on the Senate floor. The changes aren't good enough because the states would still be preempted from better protecting their consumers and some existing state laws would be rolled back.

Remember Equifax? It's one of the nation's Big 3 credit bureaus. It's based in Atlanta. Still not sure? Oh, maybe you'll remember this: Equifax finally admitted in September that months earlier it had lost 145 million consumer records, including Social Security Numbers, to hackers. Here's our latest release explaining that instead of holding Equifax accountable, this week Congress is busy trying to help Equifax.

We're opposing S2155 on the Senate floor this week. The main message against in the media has been that it puts mortgage borrowers at risk of bad loans and racial discrimination. Worse, it puts our economy at risk by removing important bank regulator tools to rein in risky practices by giant and big banks. For that matter, it could even allow risky practices to migrate to community banks. But there's more. The bill's so-called consumer protection provisions intended to offset its rollbacks, including its free credit freeze, aren't that good and preempt stronger state actions.

In the run-up to the 2006-2007 mortgage bubble that led to the total collapse of our financial system in 2008, the Big 3 credit bureaus sold products known as "trigger lists" that aided sketchy mortgage companies in disrupting consumer transactions. The lists were "credited" with making a bad situation worse. Guess what? Longtime syndicated housing columnist Ken Harney warns: "they're back."

We've been working hard to oppose a bill to weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. You remember, that's the law passed in the wake of the second-biggest financial collapse in our history, caused by Wall Street recklessness. The bill has massive support from both Wall Street and community banks. S2155 is on the Senate floor this week. It has enough Democratic votes to pass, but consumer champions are fighting back. Read our opposition letter.

Today Equifax admitted to losing information for over 2 million more Americans. Here's our release explaining why it's time for Congress to follow the lead of several states and hold Equifax accountable, insead of letting it off the hook.

U.S. PIRG experts comment on a case heard before the Supreme Court Monday concerning whether American Express rules preventing merchants from steering customers to alternative lower-cost cards violate the antitrust laws. Hint: We agree with and supported several states that brought the case on behalf of their citizens. We also make the point that unless the states prevail, the practices of dominant tech platforms like Google and Amazon and Facebook will also be immunized from action.

There’s an important legal fight happening right now over the temporary leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And U.S. PIRG Education Fund, along with nine other consumer advocacy groups, just weighed in with a friend-of-the-court brief against the President and his pick. Find out why the Consumer Bureau needs to be independent in this blog entry about why the legal dispute over the CFPB matters.